By Bill Boorman

 Over the last year we have witnessed some real developments in  the integration of social recruiting in the graduate market. I have  been fortunate enough to speak with Andy Hyatt of Bernard Hodes   about the social approach that banking giant, Barclays, has taken  to integrate social in order to promote their culture brand.

Culture branding is an area more businesses are thinking about when developing their online recruiting strategy. Culture, environment and values are becoming increasingly important to candidates particularly at entry level. If you’re going to
be committing yourself to a company at the start of what you hope will be a worthwhile career, then you want to know that you share the same values as the business, and that you are going to fit in. It’s a huge step, and whatever the state of the market, the best candidates from the graduate market have plenty of choices and it is hard to differentiate from the leading names. On the face of it, the jobs look much the same; it’s only the people and what the business really represents behind the brochure that makes the real difference.

In the case of Barclays, they elected to build a social hub within the body of their career site. The hub is simple to navigate and included social features like blogs from last year’s intake, videos, Twitter feed and Facebook widget. The emphasis is on authentic story telling, giving a real feel for being at work rather than work. The results tell an interesting story that illustrates how this has impacted on their recruiting efforts.

The first noticeable point is that the site became considerably stickier. The average visitor time moved from 3 to 10 minutes. The interesting stat is that while the visitor numbers were considerably up from the previous year, with 355,000 visitors (51% up) viewing 1.6M pages (72% up), more people viewed more pages for longer, with each area of the site being explored. The key to achieving this growth in every area was the authentic and interactive nature of the content. People like to see and hear from people like them, talking in a natural way about the things that are important to them.

The other result that stands out is the number of applications received. While the traffic was at a record level, the applications were down by 41%. On the face of this, it’s a bit concerning, but the conversion rates of those applications received tell a very different story, up by 55%.

What the social content has meant is that candidates are getting a much better feel for the value and culture of the business, and whether they see themselves fitting in at Barclays. The candidates, who would have previously applied and dropped out at a later stage, chose not to apply. The remaining candidates were bought in and prepared, going in to the interview and assessment stage with real reasons for joining.

Barclays, Hodes and Hyatt’s team have done a great job of this. I will be sharing this story in a webinar which will be announced soon. Keep your eyes peeled.

Still questioning the ROI of social?

Bill

Read More from Bill Boorman:

• The 3 R’s Of Social Messaging
• The Key to Reaching All the Contacts You Need 
• Reach Without Network Is A #FAIL

To view Bill Boorman’s blog, click here. Follow Bullhorn Reach & Bill Boorman on Twitter.